Archive of ‘Digital & Social’ category

I was a bit surprised to see a prompt for me to update my Facebook News Feed this morning. After all, they announced the updates last Thursday and Facebook hasn’t necessarily been the quickest at rolling out new features.

May be the company’s public status.

After spending a few hours this evening with the new layout, I must say I’m quite pleased. Aesthetically, the Feed is ultra clean and its functionality is much more modern. Check out the look below in this snapshot of a single post:

Likewise, the Feed itself is vastly improved. Hover over the black bar at left in the image above and it expands to display navigation points including a link to your Profile, Pages you manage and those online you can message privately. Tagged individuals and Pages display in bold black text and link headlines are in a wonderful serif font.

To the right, you’ll see the various feeds, a new feature that mimiks Google+ (not the only Google nod in this update). The multiple feeds option includes feeds for all the Most Recent posts, Music, personalized ones based on interestes (for example, I have custom feeds for Prairie High School, Washington State University, FensePost and the city of Mount Vernon), and more.

There’s also a Photos feed, a snapshot of which you can see below:

More emphasis throughout the new Feeds is placed on stories; this includes images.

Personally, I love the new layout and look. Of late, Facebook has started to feel a bit stale, and I think the News Feed changes are just the thing the site needs to maintain its relevancy with those who, like myself, have been around since 2004.

These changes excite me, and while others will be adverse to the updates, this will be nothing new. Roll-outs such as these are often met with mixed feelings. For me, I praise the updates and look forward to what Facebook has in store for us with the updated Timeline (which I noted earlier has started rolling out in New Zealand).

Today I downloaded a new app, the Cyclemeter GPS iPhone App for cycling and running by Abvio, Inc. My plan is to use it as I train up for the Group Health Seattle to Portland (STP) 2013 bike ride.

What prompted this action was the sun. Yesterday was a beautiful day and while everyone else used it to mow the lawn and do yard work, I wanted to bring out the bike and hit the road. So I did.

I wanted a way to track my progress via phone, and perhaps just as importantly, share it with my friends socially. After a little research, I chose the Cyclemeter GPS app as it boasted all the features I was looking for and the reports received for each ride are highly detailed yet presented in a layman’s, easy-to-understand fashion.

For example, the left screenshot below shows my ride route and the one on the right displays the ride time, distance traveled and current speed:

The app also tracks your rides over time, giving you an easy-to-navigate calendar where you can view this data. This will surely be useful as I ramp up training for the STP.

In the left-most screenshot below, my speed was tracked for the duration of the ride and you can see it graphically displayed over time. The middle screenshot shows the elevation covered from the start point to the finish point. As I activated the app about two miles in (once it had downloaded), you can see my overall elevation remained fairly constant with a slight upward grade.

The right-most image above shows its integration with your phone’s iTunes library. This means you can play the proper tunes for the ride.

Note: I am strongly opposed to wearing headphones while riding. Be safe if you plan to have a few tunes while you ride and use the phone’s speaker instead, and be courteous to others and keep the volume at a reasonable level.

Finally, you can integrate it with Facebook and Twitter. I connected it with Facebook after my ride and Twitter this morning, so next time I activate the app for a ride, my friends and followers will see my training progress (I may update this article with screenshots at that time). And, come the STP, they can follow my progress to Portland.

Other bicycling apps are available (check out a few more cycling apps here before you make your final decision), but the Cyclemeter GPS iPhone App seemed the best given you can view all the data right from your phone. That was the selling point for me; other apps require you to download information and view it via your laptop or PC.

I’m excited to dive into more of the features as I train up, in particular its social integration. But thus far, I am more than satisfied with its $4.99 purchase price. You get a wealth of information that would run you $50 to $100 were you to purchase a stand-alone odometer system, and it goes into far more detail than the standard odometer as well.

Update: March 14, 2013 @ 5pm

Alright, so I had a chance to use the social feature and, for the most part, I’m pleased. Facebook posts a lovely map of your ride and provides the key details anyone would want to know: miles covered, duration of the ride and speed in miles per hour.

Twitter goes two steps further by providing followers with two tweets: one at the beginning of the ride and one at the end.

Given Twitter’s 140 character limitation, a link is provided that goes into a lot more detail. You can zoom in and out of the map to see the path of the ride. It also provides, graphically, both speed and elevation on the y-axis over – and they give you options – distance, time, and ride time. Below the fold in the screen shot below is more data, but I’m not going to go into all that at this time.

I’m a bit disappointed that the integration with Facebook doesn’t provide a link to this page, but alas, maybe it will in a future update.

End Update

With this app, I’ll be removing that temperamental odometer unit currently mounted to my handlebars. I’ll be replacing it with an iPhone mount instead.

So yesterday’s ride saw me travel Dike Road from Mount Vernon to Conway and back, a total of close to 20 miles. If you’re wondering how the countryside along this route looks, see the image below:

Back in late December or early January, my fiance Andi decided she wanted to start a fashion blog. Fashion has always been a major part of her life, and it seemed a logical step to take it to the next level and write about it.

Since this decision, we’ve been struggling to name the blog. After a few months of occasional brainstorming, we decided that enough was enough. We needed to find a name, and we needed to do so right away.

Here are three steps we took to name her new fashion blog. If you’re in the same predicament we were, hopefully they’ll provide you some words of wisdom (or at least encouragement).

1. Brainstorm

I love the photo above (by Flickr user jakecaptive) entited “Brainstorm” as that’s almost always the first place to start. Andi and I began by brainstorming.

While we didn’t use sticky notes, any and all ideas went onto a text document and we weeded them down to a small handful.

Unfortunately, the ones we liked best were already taken, and as time passed it became harder to think up new options. We needed to look elsewhere for inspiration. By taken, I’m referring to unavailable URLs.

Though it failed to yield the desired result, brainstorming is a great starting point. Generating the free flow of ideas will get you thinking about what you want to write about, why you want to write about it, and how you can carve a niche for yourself in the blogosphere.

I cover a few more questions to ask yourself during all three of these options in the conclusion.

2. Search and Research

Being that it will be a fashion blog, when brainstorming failed to yield desired results, we turned to Google. The first order of business was to do a few quick searches and see what popped up. Here are a few search strings we entered into Google:

This is precisely how I started my music blog of more than six years, FensePost. As a DJ at KZUU while in graduate school, I chose the name “Fense” to represent my on-air personality (a name I use to this day on my Friday night show on KSVR). This naturally progressed into the blog name FensePost.

Back to the case study. In searching for a name for Andi’s new fashion blog, we didn’t find any of the ideas in the previous link (or any of the other articles we checked out) worthy of name generation. But it gave us an idea, which leads to number three.

3. Think Outside the Box

Making abstract connections is a great way to name a blog. Brainstorming failed to yield a name. Searching for ideas didn’t work either. But it gave us an idea that worked:

Our favorite collective band is Belle & Sebastian. What about marrying something fashion related with a lyric or song name by the band?

A-ha! We landed on the perfect name shortly thereafter. Like Denim in the Movies, a play off Belle & Sebastian’s “Like Dylan in the Movies” off their 1996 sophomore LP If You’re Feeling Sinister.

Thinking outside the box is vague. In our case, it meant drawing upon inspiration in the IFB link noted above, making abstract connections about seemingly unrelated items. In our case, it was music, film and fashion. Her blog will likely encapsulate a little of all three, with the main focal point being, of course, fashion.

Conclusion

Naming your new blog can be among the harder tasks of starting a blog. Approaching the problem creatively and strategically can help you land on that perfect name. Here are a few questions to ask yourself if you’re looking to enter the blogosphere:

• What is your purpose behind starting a blog?
• What do you hope to accomplish with your blog?
• What, specifically, will your blog cover?
• What other blogs fit your niche or category?
• What will differentiate your blog within its niche?

Think about these questions and write down the answers. I recommend doing this before you launch into the initial brainstorm, then revisit them frequently as you go.

The answers will get you thinking about how best to move forward and create a strategy around your blog and generate blog post ideas, if not assist you on the way to finding a solid gold blog name. And they’ll provide footing for developing your overall blog goals and the strategy to help you achieve them.

It’s easy to see this as an accomplishment for a company, but I think the truth is that it’s an accomplishment for our community. Now, more than ever, people are capturing the world in real-time using Instagram—sharing images from the farthest corners of the globe. What we see as a result is a world more connected and understood through photographs.

Kevin Systrom, Instagram Co-Founder and writer of those words downplays the milestone, putting it more on the users than his on ingenuity. Humble, smart, honest. But a lot has to be said about Systrom, who assisted in bringing the idea to life.

Of all the social places to follow a business, Instagram is perhaps my favorite. It capitalizes on putting a human touch to a company, connecting its products with its fans:

I may only go to Starbucks about once a month, but I love their brand even more thanks to Instagram. They occasionally put a fun twist on product placement:

The same goes for Mission Bicycle. As an avid biker, I may not own one of their bicycles, but I aspire to one day park a Mission in my garage:

How can a business capitalize on the image-centric nature of today’s social world using Instagram? It can come in many ways, depending on the ultimate goal for being there and how it relates to the company’s overarching business and marketing goals. Used consistently, Instagram can be a great way to share a side of the business that may not often be seen, or portray the business and its customers in a light that is warm and endearing.

One brand that does this well is General Electric (disclaimer: I am a GE stockholder). Their photos tend to be of highly technical heavy machinery, of jet engines and wind turbines, of unknown industrial and mechanical manufacturing plants. Not something you’d expect to be interesting or amazing when photographed with a camera-phone, but put through the lens of Instagram the colors pop and life begins to emerge from machinery that would otherwise seem ominous:

Have you used Instagram for your business? If so, do please share. And feel free to follow me on Instagram while you’re at it!